We read
that "Tapsters are forbid to sell to the Indians," and that
"unseasonable night tippling" is also tabooed; likewise drinking after
nine in the evening when curfew rings, or "on a Sunday before three
o'clock, when divine service shall be over."
I wonder whether little old "Washington Hall" was built too late to
come under these regulations? It was a roadhouse of some repute in
1820, and a famous meeting place for celebrities in the sporting
world. It was, too, a tavern and coffee house for travellers (its
punch was famous!) and the stagecoaches stopped there to change
horses. At this moment of writing it is still standing, on the south
of Washington Square,--I think number 58,--with other shabby
structures of wood, which, for some inscrutable reason, have never
been either demolished or improved. Now they are doomed at last, and
are to make way for new and grand apartment houses; and so these,
among the oldest buildings in Greenwich, drift into the mist of the
past.
And in that same part of the Square--in number 59 or 60, it is
said--lived one who cannot be omitted from any story of the Potter's
Field: Daniel Megie, the city's gravedigger.
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